Investing in tools for prospects to lift revenue, improve rep efficiency, and deliver more accurate sales forecasts This paper is written for sales team leadership and sales operations staff who are focused on improving sales process within...

Any sales manager who is looking to understand where the greatest gains can be made across their team should use this collaboration maturity model to evaluate individual contributors, the team as a whole, and their technology stack.

The most important person in the deal is not the sales rep, it’s not even the sales manager, so why do they get tools to help them navigate a long and complex deal, when the real MVPs — your prospect and their budget approver — get nothing?

At the dawn of man, we only had a few tools, each one created only after careful consideration of what was actually needed to get the job done. Today we run the risk of the tools becoming the master, sucking time that should be spent with customers and spitting out process so prescriptive that our natural craftiness atrophies and we’re unable to innovate out in the wild.

It might be low self-esteem, or it might be a desire to get to the demo faster, but the vast majority of sales reps never turn on their camera. No matter what the reason, Reps who hide behind the curtain are missing an opportunity to make a personal connection, a...

Decision makers are busy people — or at least they should be — and thus they’re terrified of losing an hour of their day to an irrelevant sales call. You can use this fact and cut through the noise by offering a speed demo with an explicit Go/No Go at the end of three...

Unless your service is real cheap or has little impact on business process, you’re going to end up running a pilot program before they adopt your solution across their organization. Many sales people resent pilots, but a good pilot is the best possible thing for a...

Trade shows aren’t all work: who can honestly say they haven’t stripped down at an after-show party and jumped into the rooftop pool? But many sales teams just turn up at shows without a game plan, and as such they waste a massive lead gen opportunity, not...

Every technical discussion includes asking about “the stack”, and every tech company probably has a stack-looking diagram with their host of choice, database of choice, backend and front-end technologies. When I was drawing up our tech stack for a DealPoint operations...

Most sales take more than one conversation. So why is the first meeting the only one that gets its own presentation? If you’re selling a complex solution, you should have a playbook that maps the entire sales cycle including what to cover in each call -- promising and...

It’s always risky to go to bat for someone. The champion inside your target company will be representing you, and if it goes bad, they get the blame. But you can make it safer for them to introduce you to their associates. HERE'S WHAT TO DO Show your rap sheet By...

You can't always be closing Lots of gurus chant on about asking for the sale, but if you're not asking for the next step first, you’re never going to even get the chance to pop the big question. Some reps don’t like to ask for the next step or they don't know how,...

The world of sales is alive with the full extremes of human behavior. With both good and bad out there — and probably calling on the same people you’re calling on — how can you prove that you’re one of the good seeds who knows your industry and is worth talking to?...

Contrary to what HubSpot will tell you, the most important role of content is not establishing your CEO as an industry thought leader, it's not even generating inbound leads via organic search. The most important role of content is to back up the promises that your...

Nearly every Prospect will at least look at an ROI calculator, but most Reps aren’t taking advantage of this free offer to come in and visit your prospect’s inner sanctum. A couple of simple steps can turn your simple ROI spreadsheet into a killer qualifying tool...

DEALPOINT BLOG Your Prospect claimed to be the decision maker, but now that they've said yes to you, it turns out they need to win budget up the chain. This is a real Catch-22: their manager doesn't want to talk directly, but your Prospect can't be trusted to relay...

DEALPOINT BLOG If you have a complicated value premise, or if your sales pitch includes an education piece, there's a very good chance your Prospect is only absorbing about 25% of what you say. You have to keep in mind that you talk about this stuff all day, but for...

DEALPOINT BLOG Hardly any deals close in the first sales call. But for each day that passes without a decision, the chance of a win decreases. By adding a couple of standard actions into your sales process, you can shorten that post-meeting decision window, increasing...

DEALPOINT BLOG Some of my best presentations happened when the screen share died and I had to actually talk with the prospect. But going live without a net is risky because it puts a lot of pressure on the individual rep to be in top form all day every day. It's also...